5-Suspected Islamists kill Bangladeshi gay activist working for US embassy

April 25, 2016 Article

Suspected Islamist militants hacked to death a leading Bangladeshi gay rights activist employed by the U.S. embassy and a friend in an apartment in Bangladesh’s capital on Monday, police said.

The killings took place two days after a university professor was slain in similar fashion on Saturday in an attack claimed by Islamic State.

Five or six assailants went to the apartment of Xulhaz Mannan, 35, an editor of Rupban, Bangladesh’s first magazine for gay, bisexual and transgender people, and attacked him and a friend with sharp weapons, Dhaka city police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sordar said.

They entered the apartment disguised as couriers, he said, quoting witnesses.

The assailants also wounded a security guard. Witnesses said the attackers shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest)” as they fled the scene.

Mannan was employed by the U.S. embassy, working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Depertment in Washington said.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the United States was “outraged” by the “barbaric attack.” He called Mannan, “a beloved member of our embassy family and a courageous advocate for LGBTI rights – human rights, actually.”

“LGBTI” stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and intersex.

A spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, Ned Price, said the United States strongly urged the Bangladeshi government to ensure the perpetrators were brought to justice.

Other attacks took place in the country on Monday, but it was not immediately clear whether those assaults were carried out by Islamist militants.

Two men on a motorcycle shot dead a former prison guard in front of Kashimpur jail, on the outskirts of Dhaka, said Khandakar Rezaul Hasan, chief of the local police station.

A teacher was hacked to death in the southwestern district of Kustia, police said.

The Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people has seen a surge in violent attacks over the past few months in which liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have been targeted.

Five secular bloggers and a publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh since February 2015.

A group affiliated with al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the killing of a liberal Bangladeshi blogger this month.

Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for the killings of two foreigners and attacks on mosques and Christian priests in Bangladesh since September.

The government has denied that Islamic State or al Qaeda groups have a presence in the country and said homegrown Islamist radicals are behind the attacks.

At least five militants have been killed in shootouts since November as security forces have stepped up a crackdown on Islamist militants looking to establish a Muslim state based on sharia, or Islamic religious law.

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Categories: Al Qaeda, attempted murder, Bangladesh, Bangladeshi Blogger, Islamic State, News, Rupban, Xulhaz Mannan

In the last weeks of the Mayoral Campaign, let’s tone down the heated rhetoric

April 24, 2016 Article

The London mayoral campaign has been a heated set of campaigns that have focussed on the backgrounds of individuals and on the associations that candidates have had with people whose views have been regarded as ‘repulsive’ and ‘extreme.’ Newspapers have led headlines on associations with extremists and social media activity has suggested that one of the candidates is Islamophobic. Within these charges, the truth has been somewhat lost.

Questioning the links between a candidate and their past associations is legitimate political discourse when someone puts themselves up for a public role such as the mayoral candidate for London. However, framing a candidate who happens to be Muslim just through the lens of extremism at a time when Muslim communities feel that they are trying to counter anti-Muslim tropes, may well have wider and deeper community impacts. This is not to say that questions should not be asked, however, there is much more to Sadiq Khan than his past associations and in the next few weeks, we would urge that the issues be looked, which include transport, housing and the role that London can play as a beacon city globally for financial investment. These are bread and butter issues and Sadiq continues to lay out these plans daily in his campaign. His plans on these bread and butter issues should be engaged with and the continuous focus on whom he associated with ten or more years ago is re-enforcing a view in some quarters, that Muslims as a whole cannot be trusted. This is unacceptable and if anything, may be turning off Muslims who may have considered politics as a future career.

Alternatively, we have seen Twitter campaigners from Labour suggest that Zac Goldmith is Islamophobic. This is a line that has been pushed by a lot of Labour campaigners against the Conservative MP and environmental activist. We have met with and spent time with Zac Goldmith. He is far from being Islamophobic and is reflective and thoughtful and deeply cares about communities. To label him as Islamophobic, undermines the value and the strength of the term and Zac is someone who has spent many years working with faith communities and with Muslim communities. Indeed, he was instrumental in working with the Kingston mosque in tackling the far right who had targeted the mosque and his involvement brought all communities together against far right extremists targeting the local Muslim community. To suggest that Zac Goldsmith is Islamophobic is to suggest that Sadiq Khan may be susceptible to being sympathetic to people with extreme views. Both narratives and suggestions are just obscene.

There are two weeks to go before Londoners go to the poll to elect their London Mayor. In these two weeks, let us focus on the policies of both Zac and Sadiq which can ensure that London remains the great city that it is. Let us vote for the candidate who can further enhance our capital city at an international level and thereby bring in much-needed investment and ensure that housing and transport issues are looked at. That is what we want from a London Mayor and that is what we hope campaigners focus on.

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Categories: Conservative Mayoral Candidate, elections, housing, Labour Mayoral Candidate, London Mayor, News, Opinions, Sadiq Khan, Transport, Zac Goldmith

Attack on Sikh Gurdwara May Indicate the Fusion of Criminality with Extremism

April 21, 2016 Article

News that the Sikh Gurdwara in the western German city of Essen may have been attacked by young people linked to a local fundamentalist extremist network has shifted focus away from far right groups, who were initially suspected for the attack.

Police have suggested that the two suspects arrested have links to a local Salafist group and that further arrests will be made in the coming days.

The attack has shaken the small Sikh community in the city and particularly at a time when Germany is seeing a resurgency in far right activity, partly caused by the refugee crisis. However, this attack may also highlight criminal activity that on many occassions, is linked to extremist groups and also helps in providing resources for their criminal actions.

The bomb exploded at a temple belonging to the Sikh Gurdwara Nanaksar congregation wounding three people – one of them, a Sikh priest, seriously. Hundreds of guests use the facility and on the day of the bombing, a Sikh wedding had taken place.

Commenting on the news, the Director of Faith Matters, Fiyaz Mughal OBE, stated:

This is another twist and turn in the cycle of violence that extremism and terrorism create. On this occassion, it seems that young people have resorted to what seems to be an act of terrorism against a community that has no link to any of the geo-political issues which drive Jihadist narratives. These young men also seemed to have turned against a community that is tiny and which no doubt will feel an even greater sense of insecurity because of what has happened to it. It is truly sickening since attacking a Gurdwara sends a message to all those who use the temple. It is a neon sign saying – we deny your right to worship peacefully and to exist. It really is sickening.

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Categories: Essen, Germany, News, Salafist, Sikh Gurdwara Nanaksar, Sikhs, terrorism

Croatian Jews boycott official Holocaust memorial over rising neo-Nazism

April 19, 2016 Article

Around 300 of Croatia’s Jewish population held a vigil outside the country’s most notorious concentration camp in protest at the government’s alleged failure to challenge rising neo-Nazi sentiment in the country.

Part of this failure concerns the downplaying of the crimes of Croatia’s pro-Nazi regime. The ultra-nationalist and antisemitic Ustaša regime took power on August 10, 1941, after Axis forces had invaded Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941.

Concentration camps were built nationwide to ‘purge’ Croatian society of ‘foreign elements’. This extended to Jews, Serbs, Roma and non-Catholic minorities.

Ustaša fascists exterminated over 500,000 Serbs. They forced 250,000 into exile and made 250,000 more Serbs convert to Catholicism under pain of death, according to Yad Vashem.

The fascist regime murdered 75 per cent of Croatia’s pre-war Jewish population of 40,000. Jews in Croatia now make up 1 per cent of the general population.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma were also murdered by the Ustaša regime, as were between 5,000 and 12,000 ethnic Croats and Muslims.

Croatia’s largest concentration camp was the Jasenovac complex, a string of five camps along the Sava River, east of Zagreb. Close to 100,000 people were murdered in this camp between 1941 and 1945.

Prisoners at the Jasenovac camp received little food. Shelter and sanitary conditions were minimal at best. Guards tortured, assaulted and murdered prisoners with impunity.

The tools of murder included hammers, knives, bars and axes. They also used blowtorches and welding rods to torture prisoners.

Eduard Sajer, a survivor of the Jasenovac concentration camp, recalled how guards had segregated barracks for Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews and Serbs. When not working as an electrician in the camp, Sajer had to dig graves for individuals murdered by a blow to the head from a mallet. He bore witness to the murder of his brother and lost his parents and other siblings in the camp. He watched others being burnt alive.

Granik and Gradina also served as local killing fields.

Croatia’s surviving Jews were deported to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1943.

According to Marko Attila Hoare, an expert on genocides the region “the Ustasha extermination of Serbs provided a catalyst for Chetnik massacres of Croat and Muslim civilians“.

Dinko Sakic, commander of the Jasenovac camp, had fled to Argentina after the war and was eventually found guilty of crimes against humanity in 1999. Sakic was responsible for the murder of more than 2,000 Serbs, Jews and Roma. He ordered executions, refused to treat the sick, worked people to death and tortured some with a blowtorch. The courts found that Sakic had personally shot dead two prisoners for smiling.

Croatia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, saw attempts to rehabilitate the image of the Ustaša. Fascists veterans received benefits from government officials. The late president Franjo Tudjman, who died in 1999, was often accused of Holocaust revisionism.

The funeral of Dinko Sakic proved a lavish affair in 2008. According to local media, he was buried in the Ustasha uniform and described by the priest at the funeral as “a person Croats must be proud of”. Israel’s former ambassador, Shmuel Meirom, condemned the funeral.

Now in 2016, there is a sense of a neo-Nazi revival. Ultra-nationalists shouted pro-Nazi slogans at a rally attended by thousands of people, including Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Ivan Tepes in January.

Similar chants were heard during a recent football match between Israel and Croatia.

The Croatian government is now taking steps to allay fears. President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic met representatives of Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and anti-fascists. Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic issued a statement condemning the Ustashe regime.

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Categories: Croatia, Far Right groups, Holocaust, Neo-Nazi, News, WW2

Video of Chibok girls puts pressure on Nigeria’s Buhari

April 15, 2016 Article

A video showing 15 of the 219 schoolgirls held by the jihadist group Boko Haram has added pressure on the Nigerian government to secure their release, after activists accused authorities of mishandling the case in the two years since their mass kidnap.

Weeping parents identified the girls captured by Boko Haram fighters, who want to establish an Islamist state in northeast Nigeria and have waged a seven-year campaign of violence, killing thousands of people and displacing two million.

President Muhammadu Buhari, elected a year ago on a promise to end endemic graft and crush the group, said in December the government could talk to Boko Haram if credible representatives emerged.

In January he said the government was launching a new investigation into the kidnapping, vowing to return the girls captured at a school in the town of Chibok while taking exams. But little has emerged since then.

In the video, apparently taken in December and given to government officials by Boko Haram as proof of life for the negotiations, a person asks the 15 girls to say their names as they stand quietly in two rows, wearing headscarves.

“I saw all the girls and they are Chibok girls,” Esther Yakubu, a parent of one of the abducted girls who saw the video broadcast by CNN said. “I recognise some of them because we are in the same area with them.”

Yakubu was marching with some 30 other parents and activists to the presidential villa in the capital Abuja to demand the government do more to return the girls. Police stopped them at the road leading to the villa.

Witnesses to the kidnapping, Nigerian military and security officials, Western diplomats and counter-terrorism experts blame a series of failings by politicians and the military in dealing with the militants, including a lack of co-ordination.

Information Minister Lai Mohammed told CNN the government was still reviewing the video. When asked about efforts to get the girls released he only said: “There are ongoing talks.”

A top government official who declined to be named, said an official reaction would only be made once the military had established the video’s authenticity.

Buhari said in a statement he hoped the girls would be “rescued”, suggesting the army will try to liberate them.

“Thousands of persons, mostly women and children, who were kidnapped by Boko Haram, have already been rescued and reunited with their families,” he said, without mentioning the video.

Buhari said he “continues to believe that with the total commitment of the Federal Government, Nigerian Armed Forces and security agencies…the girls will be eventually rescued.”

INFORMATION “LOST”

Activists said Buhari’s government is not doing enough, urging the state to use the video for clues to find the girls and speak to girls who had managed to flee Boko Haram captivity.

“The incredible wealth of information that victims of terrorists can offer our security forces is being lost in the current undefined and ineffective approach,” Aisha Yesufu of the #BringBackOurGirls group said in a statement.

Buhari has blamed his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan who was slow to react to the abduction.

Under Buhari’s command, Nigerian troops backed up by Chad, Niger and Cameroon have recaptured most of territory held by Boko Haram, which pledged allegiance to Islamic State last year.

However, Boko Haram has no unified leadership which makes it difficult for the government to find someone to negotiate with, analysts say.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau appeared in a video circulated last month in which he seemed to suggest he was ailing and Boko Haram was losing its effectiveness. But another video emerged last week saying there would be no surrender.

Fulan Nasrullah, a security analyst, said there was little chance of a breakthrough in the talks between the government and the militants after the failure of previous efforts.

“The government is angry about the leak, as are the insurgents,” he said. “The insurgents are not currently willing to negotiate for the girls following the government’s alleged bad faith in previous negotiations,” he said.

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Categories: Boko Haram, Bring Our Girls Back, Chibok girls, Good Luck Jonathan, News, Nigeria

Far-right Austrian leader visits Israel’s Holocaust memorial

April 13, 2016 Article

The leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on Tuesday, laying a wreath under the engraved names of towns in Austria from where Jews were expelled by the Nazis.

He said anti-Semitism had no place in his party and urged a common front against Islamists.

Strache’s party, which last year expelled a member of its parliamentary group for anti-Semitic comments, has sought to redress the worst of its past while retaining popular support with outspoken opposition to Muslim migration.

During his visit, Strache kept a Fedora hat firmly on his head as a sign of respect and declined to answer questions. But afterwards he explained why he was visiting Yad Vashem’s Valley of the Communities, where the names of 5,000 towns and cities where Jews once lived are listed on monumental stone walls.

“For us, it’s important to act against anti-Semitism and also against Islamism and terrorism and to discuss the issues we have in common,” he told Reuters by telephone. “Anti-Semitism often emerges anew from Islamism and from the left.”

The Israeli foreign ministry said it had nothing to do with Strache’s visit and the Austrian embassy in Tel Aviv also said it was not involved. Strache said he was invited by Likud, the right-wing party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We have a lot in common,” Strache said of Likud. “I always say, if one defines the Judeo-Christian West, then Israel represents a kind of border. If Israel fails, Europe fails. And if Europe fails, Israel fails.”

Michael Kleiner, a Likud party member and a former lawmaker, confirmed to Israel’s Army Radio that Strache had been invited by his party and said he was a friend of Israel.

RISING FORCE

Strache, 46, is a rising political force in Austria. His the Freedom Party won 20 percent of the vote in the small Alpine republic’s last elections in 2013. In some recent polls its support has been put at as much as 30 percent.

Strache, who failed in a bid to become mayor of Vienna last year, has himself been accused of anti-Semitism in the past.

In 2012, he was vilified over a cartoon posted on his Facebook page that depicted a fat banker with a hooked nose and six-pointed star buttons on his sleeve. The banker was gorging himself at the expense of a thin man representing “the people”.

Austrian President Heinz Fischer called it “the low point of political culture which deserves to be universally and roundly condemned”. Strache denied being anti-Semitic and has since repeatedly denounced anti-Semitism.

The memorial Strache visited on Tuesday is a poignant reminder of the impact of persecution on a race. Asked what thoughts this prompted about the displacement of Muslims, he said the two could not be compared.

“Every time people are driven away from their homes it’s dramatic,” he said, mentioning the threat from Islamic State insurgents in Syria and Iraq. “All of us in the western-liberal, Judeo-Christian community with common values must stand up against this inhumanity.”

(Additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla in Vienna; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt/Mark Heinrich)

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Categories: Austria, Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache, Judeo-Christian, News, Strache, Yad Vashem

Why the latest poll won’t tell us what all British Muslims actually think

April 12, 2016 Article

Channel 4 commissioned ICM to poll Muslims in Britain on a range of issues from women’s rights to marriage equality.

But did the poll titled “What do British Muslims really think?” answer its own question? Polling British Muslims is a difficult and expensive task. It’s why YouGov avoided the Sun’s now infamous ‘1 in 5 Muslims’ poll.

ICM’s researchers picked 138 random Local Super Output Areas where Muslims make up at least 20 per cent of the population. This skewed the findings to areas with relative social deprivation. It also over-represented certain ethnic groups. Yet it still captured 51 per cent of the total Muslim population.

Of the 1,081 Muslims polled, 55 per cent were Pakistani. British Asians/Asians totaled 83 per cent of the polling data. Data from the last census revealed that British Asian/Asians totaled 67.6 per cent of Muslims in England and Wales.

The poll included just 11 Arabs and 16 white Muslims who account for 6.6 per cent and 7.8 per cent of Muslims in England and Wales.

Despite methodological issues it remains a serious poll.

As with previous surveys – Muslims identify with Britain at a higher rate than the national average. They also expressed greater attachment to their local areas. A vast majority believe that Britain was a good place for Muslims to live in, and 78 per cent said they would like to integrate into British life on certain topics.

Nearly a quarter supported the idea of sharia law operating in parts of Britain above British law. Yet what defines sharia law remains ambigious and open to interpretation. But as Dr Imam Mamadou Bocoum notes: ‘Shariah means a road that leads into Spring Water, which is nothing but to live in peace and harmony. Amongst the principles of the Shariah is to preserve and protect life, intellect, property, honour, lineage, and religion‘.

There was little support among the Muslims polled to establish a caliphate. Support for ISIS polled at just 3 per cent. Few blamed the police or government for girls travelling to Syria.

More than a third of Muslims polled would report individuals who they suspected of seeking to participate in terrorism abroad to police. A figure that stands above the control sample of 30 per cent. Nearly half would attempt to dissuade the individual.

On the subject of extremism, 47 per cent agreed that Muslims need to do more to tackle extremism. The data reveals that a vast majority of Muslims look to the government to tackle Islamophobia and fund special projects to help communities root out the causes of violent extremism.

Islamophobia is a concern in this context, even when 73 per cent thought that religious harassment was not a problem in their local area. Individuals may of course experience less discrimination within their own ethnic and faith communities. Or in a public setting disclose their experiences to strangers. Research also points to the fact that hate crimes increase in areas of deprivation.

The wider public had also expressed a wider concern for Islamophobia than the Muslims polled. Nor do we know what language the interviews were conducted in. So it’s possible that individuals may not understand a question that pertains to religious prejudice.

There was also an overwhelming desire to empower young Muslims and women in the decisions that affect them. And many felt that better leadership in Muslim communities would help address the causes of violent extremism. Just one in 10 sought information on current affairs from mullahs at mosques. And a fifth never attend their local mosques. But 72 per cent felt that their local mosque did represent their views.

The most popular choice for television news was BBC 1, and a vast majority got their news from social media accounts. Yet again, the BBC remained the most popular source for news online.

Discussions of attitudes towards homosexuality dictated a majority of media coverage. The poll found that 52 per cent dsaid they disagreed with homosexuality being legal in Britain, compared with 5 per cent among the public at large who disagreed.

For British-born Muslims, 27 per cent agreed that homosexuality should be legal. Almost a third said neither/nor and 38 per cent disagreed. But that figure requires a caveat since the total figure in the weighted and unweighted sample is below 500 people. Muslims born outside of Britain were more likely to disagree that homosexuality should be legal (a net disagreement of 68 per cent in a sample of 601 or 609 when factored against weighted and unweighted bases).

On the topic of gay marriage and allowing a homosexual person to teach, the data reveals slight differences between Muslims born in the UK and abroad. But the above caveat still applies.

Despite a proclivity towards antisemitic tropes, British Muslims were not hostile towards Jewish communities. ICM asked the control and Muslim samples to measure their feelings towards faith and non-faith groups on a thermometer. Oddly, views towards Sikhs were missing from the data. The control group survey were more likely to agree that antisemitism was a problem. Yet 44 per cent of the Muslim survey and 46 per cent of the control group did not consider antisemitism a problem in Britain today.

The control survey were far more likely to disagree (51 per cent) with the statement ‘Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust’. Yet 18 per cent did agree with the statement, compared to 34 per cent in the Muslim survey.

Confusion about deaths in the Holocaust in the Muslim survey may owe to ignorance, not antisemitism. As 55 per cent did not know the true figure. Just 14 people agreed that it was a myth perpetuated by Jewish people. The control group was not asked this question so it’s hard to make a direct comparison.

Muslims surveyed overwhelmingly had also rejected the right of individuals to publish pictures of the prophet Muhammad. But 12 per cent stated that it would depend on the nature of the pictures. Responses in the control group were more in favour of publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. A fifth of non-Muslims who rejected this position were Christian.

Opinions in the control group sample were even more divided when it came to the question of publishing cartoons that mock the prophet Muhammad. And 44 per cent said publications should not have this right – and that included 32 per cent of non-religious people and 50 per cent of Christians. A measure of support from Christians may owe to a sense of Abrahamic solidarity or the UK’s own historic and abolished blasphemy laws.

Linda Woodhead, Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University, surveyed different faith groups in 2013. It found a variety of liberal and conservative views towards topics like abortion and homosexuality.

ICM also asked how often Muslims had mixed socially with non-Muslims in the past year. Again, what defines this social interaction remains open to interpretation. It was rare for Muslims to have had no social mixing outside of the home. Nor are social interactions defined by the boundaries of a person’s home. That applies to Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Yet the data does show that at least a fifth did host and visit non-Muslims friends at least once a week, and 17 per cent welcomed non-Muslims into their homes on a daily basis.

Trevor Phillips, the former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, who will present the Channel 4 documentary What British Muslims Really Think tomorrow evening, made a problematic statement on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Phillips stated that: “What we also found is that there is a correspondence between this desire to live separately and sympathy for terrorism. People who want to live separately are about twice as likely to say that they have sympathy for terrorist acts.” Yet the data reveals that just 40 people expressed sympathy for terrorist acts. Nor was there any effort to extrapolate the meaning from a vague term, as sympathy does not always mean endorsement. Phillips is overstating the opinions of a tiny proportion in the data set.

That rhetoric can also suggest that religiosity and support for terrorism are somehow linked, a point that misunderstands the nature of radicalisation.

ICM asked some wide-ranging, probing and sensationalistic questions; but to suggest it captures the breadth of Muslim opinion is not quite accurate. Yes, some issues to address but the real conversations must happen beyond this poll.

This post originally appeared on Religious Reader.

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Categories: British Muslims, Caliphate, Channel 4, homosexuality, ICM, ICM poll, Mamadou Bocoum, Media, Shariah, Trevor Phillips

Al Qaeda’s Al-Zawahiri Pledges Allegiance to New Taliban Chief

August 13, 2015 Article

Al-Qaeda’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri has pledged allegiance to the new head of the Afghan Taliban in an audio on-line message. The move is seen politically to enhance the status of the new leader, (Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour), after the death of the Group’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, some two years ago.

Al-Zawahiri stated, “We pledge our allegiance … (to the) commander of the faithful, Mullah Mohammad Akhtar Mansour, may God protect him.”

The move is seen as a way of shoring up the waning support for Al-Qaeda, a group which has largely lost traction and support to groups such as ISIS and local splinter extremist groups in countries across the Maghreb to the Middle East. The move is also meant to try and hold the group together as it started to splinter after the reported death of Mullah Omar.

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Categories: Afghan Taliban, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Al-Zawahiri, Mullah Mansour, Mullah Omar, Religious Reader

Title: Challenging Anti-Muslim Bigotry and Challenging All Forms of Bigotry, Within and Against Muslim Communities

November 3, 2014 Article

Over the last 3 years, I have been involved in formulating, implementing and managing the TELL MAMA project that has built up a substantial amount of information and expertise in the monitoring, mapping and measuring of anti-Muslim hatred or Islamophobia. Our work has supported over 2,000 people nationally since mid-2012 and has also filled a much needed gap for victims of anti-Muslim bigotry.

The last 3 years have been an exhilarating and gruelling set of experiences, where the personal safety of my colleagues and I have been affected. Far Right extremists, anti-Muslim ideologues, on-line bigots and those who dislike religion have used every opportunity to smear, intimidate, lie and spin against the work of TELL MAMA and against the leadership of the project in the hope that by doing so, the data that we have collected will be seen as ‘suspect.’ You see, for them, there is nothing of value in Islam or Muslim communities and any material or information which shows the experiences of Muslim communities is to be smeared to ensure that ‘no sympathy’ builds up for victims of anti-Muslim hatred. Victim blaming has become, in their minds, normal on the basis of their bigoted prejudice.

Yet after all of their disinformation they have failed to damage the work and this also includes some within Muslim communities who wanted to run such a project and who simply failed to organise and implement a monitoring project on a national basis. Their tactic has therefore been to snipe from the side lines. So, the last three years have seen my colleagues and I develop skins of steel in our desire to do what is right and that is to support victims of Islamophobia and to map, measure and monitor incidents in the UK. That has been our objective and we have taken a laser like approach to the task at hand with all of the background noise of detractors, social media intimidation and abuse that we have received on virtually a daily basis.

As I have suggested earlier, there has been a small section of detractors from within Muslim communities. I have outlined an element of this, though more recently, there have been those who talk about Islamophobia and repeat the issue again and again in social settings, yet, they have campaigned against us for our outspoken views on the need to counter bigotry in general. For example, anyone who publicly promotes or supports views around homophobia, trans-gender or anti-Semitic bigotry has no moral authority to campaign or speak about the need to tackle Islamophobia. This simple message and the highlighting of a handful of public figures within Muslim communities for their openly homophobic views led to a libelous campaign against me in early 2014. For a period of time it seemed that homophobes were too busy developing a campaign against me, rather than informing members of Muslim communities where they could report in hatred and bigotry. You see, I have a strong feeling that a vast majority of those involved in the campaign were men who cared very little to ensure that visible Muslim women, who are the target of anti-Muslim hatred, get access to information on how they can report in and seek redress on Islamophobic incidents. It seems that what really mattered to them was why two consenting adults of the same sex should sleep together and anyone standing up against such public bigotry was to be hung, drawn and quartered as a ‘heretic.’ Such people, frankly, belong to the days when stocks were used to punish people and they belong in that era, yet they head up and control networks and organisations which is deeply damaging to the image of Muslim communities.

This campaign showed what we are up against. As the only project methodically analysing anti-Muslim hatred with an independent oversight body – Teesside University, you would expect support from certain quarters though egos, self-interest, ultra-conservative religious circles and bigots have sought to control the agenda. We simply cannot allow this happen for the sake of those victims who rarely have a voice and many of whom suffer in silence. Many of these women victims simply want access to justice and there have also been individuals from Ahmadi and LGBTQ Muslim communities who have reported anti-Muslim hate to us showing us that they trust the neutral and non-judgemental roles that we take in our work.

You see this is why this work is important. 40 years ago, bigots railed against African Caribbean communities, Ugandan Asian communities and then Turkish speak communities and so the list goes on. Today, that bigotry has turned full circle against Islam and Muslims. It does not matter whether you have been in the UK for 3 days or 30 years, the target for far right groups and some on the political right, are Muslim communities. Some of what they say may have an ounce of merit whilst a lot of it comes from a place of knee jerk reactionism and prejudice. Leaving this work to those small number of detractors in Muslim communities would be disastrous for this area of work given some of their backgrounds and their lack of understanding of basic recording mechanisms and in working with communities such as LGBTQ, Jewish and non-faith communities. This is why we continue to move forward on this much needed work and why TELL MAMA has gained support from a wider range of Muslim and non-Muslim circles. It is also why I feel proud to head up a project with all of the threats and abuse that we receive.

We simply exist for the victims and their voices. We hope that those who seek greater glory and honour by making out that they are specialists in ‘Islamophobia’ take heed of this. Remembering the victim and their honour and dignity are fundamental in hate crime recoding work and that is why we get up, baton down the hatches and remain vigilant in the face of aggression, paranoia and hate.

Categories: Hate Crimes, MyBlog

Timothy Martin Burton, aka ‘M-CAT’ @catstrangler101 and the Targeted Campaign

May 15, 2014 Article

The Tweets

Over the last 10 months I have been subjected to a hate campaign that involved a West Midlands based Timothy Martin Burton, who through a variety of accounts, targeted me because of my faith and on the back of a series of articles highlighting the TELL MAMA Islamophobic monitoring project. Whilst Timothy Martin Burton’s @catstrangler101 account was reported to the local police and through ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officer) contacts, no action was taken even though multiple tweets were targeted at TELL MAMA (of which I am the Director) and which specifically named me. It was at this point where we decided to act and information was provided by TELL MAMA to West Midlands Police which linked Timothy Martin Burton to the @catstrangler101 M-CAT account that had over 6,000 Twitter followers, many of them Far Right sympathisers. A look at this account provided us with an insight into the mind-set of Timothy Martin Burton when we found a tweet from the 18th of May 2012 which read:

“#ThingsWeAskGod2HelpUsWith – Getting rid of all the inbred, parasitic, welfare scrounging Muslim paedophiles out of our country for a start.”

The campaign against me was triggered off after an Andrew Gilligan article that was written in the Telegraph on the 2nd of June 2013. The subsequent campaign by Timothy Martin Burton went onto March 2014 and was conducted by Burton through Twitter and through a number of Far Right and extremist web-sites that crossed the United States, the UK and Australia. In one of the postings on a bizarre and virulently anti-Muslim Australian focussed web-site, Timothy Martin Burton stated, “Excellent post Mike, and I shall be reposting it far and wide, a strategy that will no doubt include the hire of an enormous billboard situated right outside Fiyaz Mughal’s office window.” We will come onto the statements made by that article and by Mike Holt, the owner of the site. In fact, a quick look at the site shows a campaign to donate to the Restore Australia web-site to ban the Bendingo Mosque campaign in Australia. Hardly impartial, the Restore Australia project is a patchwork quilt of xenophobic, anti-Muslim and extreme comments and articles.

So, what were the targeted tweets that were aimed at us? On the 2nd of June 2013, we received the following tweet after the Gilligan article went live on the Telegraph web-site. It was addressed to @tellmamauk, the Twitter address for the anti-Muslim hate crime monitoring project and also included the English Defence League Twitter address. Coming from Timothy Martin Burton it read:

“@Official_EDL, @tellmamauk: Let’s stick it to that mendacious taquiyya (sic) artist Fiyaz Mughal.”

For those not aware of the meaning of the word ‘Taqiyya’, we have listed the context and the meaning in this previous article. Clearly, in this context, the term was used to suggest that I, because of my faith, lied to spread, protect or further Islam. The narrative is virtually identical to the twisted anti-Semitism of Far Right groups who see Jews as maliciously wanting to subvert the Christian West by taking over positions of assumed power. In this context, it was targeted at me, because of my faith.

On the 3rd of June 2013, I received another tweet from an account named FreedomLovin’Terrier @ardentadmirer1. It read as:

“Breaking News @tellmamauk: Mendacious Muslim scumbag Fiyaz Mughal agrees not to tell any more porkies if UK Gov’t give him back his £214,000 back.” We believed this to be Timothy Martin Burton given the use of the same vocabulary in the tweet.

Again on the 3rd of June 2013, we received a further tweet from Timothy Martin Burton’s @catstrangler101 M-CAT account which stated the following:

“#MyJihad – the taqqiyya (sic) by @tellmamauk about the ‘wave of attacks on Muslims’ after the Woolwich Islamic murder.” A link was also attached to this tweet directed at us in TELL MAMA and naming me and isolating me out for my faith because of the taqiyya suggestion.

Once again on the 3rd of June, Timothy Martin Burton sent us another tweet from his M-CAT @catstrangler101 account which stated:

“@tellmamauk – I wish to report Fiyaz Mughal for being a mendacious, grievance-mongering little Muslim scumbag and I want my £214,000 back.” These tweets were retweeted by a coterie of Far Right activists on-line.

On the 9th of June Timothy Martin Burton’s M-CAT @catstrangler101 account went into action again and he targeted me specifically again. It read as:

“#MyJihad – Thanks to M-CAT, the mendacious little scumbag Fiyaz Mughal @tellmamauk has had his funding withdrawn.”The tweet ended with a link and was referenced to another article written by Andrew Gilligan which asserted that our funding had been withdrawn because TELL MAMA had, according to the Telegraph, overplayed the backlash against Muslim communities and which we had previously challenged in TELL MAMA. However, what is clear is that after the murder of Lee Rigby, there was a sharp rise in anti-Muslim hate incidents and crimes and these can be further triangulated here and here. I don’t choose to go over the whole debate since this matter is now in the past and TELL MAMA and the work that we do must move forward for the sake of the people that we are helping – victims of anti-Muslim hatred.

Timothy Martin Burton continued with his hate campaign stating in a tweet on the 15th of June 2013 through the M-CAT @catstrangler101 account:

“#FamousMuslimQuotes – “Yes infidel, Islam has always been at the forefront of medical technology. Now shut up and drink this camel piss.”

He carried on with a further tweet to the 6,000 plus followers and to the Twitter-sphere saying:

“#MyJihad Hey kuffar! Fed up with Islam? Don’t like your Muslim neighbours? Mosque in your area causing a problem? Call 1-800-DRONE-STRIKE now!” Two references were made here and the first being a twist on the use of the #MyJihad hashtag which was being used by some Muslim Twitter users to take away the violent nature of the assumptions of the word and the latter was a reference to the drone strikes conducted in a few Muslim majority countries, such as Pakistan. Burton was using this as a way of further inflaming sentiments within Muslim communities.

On the 18th of June 2013, Timothy Martin Burton, again through the now infamous M-CAT @catstrangler101 account tweeted the following:

“FYI I don’t like having to refer to Muslims as shit-for-brains, but indoctrination with Islam removes capacity for constructive thinking.”

On the 19^th of June 2013, Timothy Martin Burton went onto tweet the following:

“#MyJihad – Not all Muslims are terrorists, paedophiles, retarded fuckwits our pushy little inbred welfare parasites with shit for brains.”

“@Little_Otto – Unfortunately I am restrained by the 140 char limit but I think we can safely say that misogyny is a defining characteristic.” This tweet referred to Muslims.

“@ellierogerz @SarveshKrDev – At the end of the day, Islamic ideology is not just an alternative viewpoint. It IS pure, unmitigated evil.”

So prolific was Timothy Martin Burton on Twitter that he decided to contact us at the beginning of September 2013. Through a separate account, which we believed to be his, he tweeted through @Muhammadtehpig (sic):

“#My Jihad – the Taqqiyya by @tellmamauk about the wave of attacks on Muslims after the Woolwich Islamic murder.”The tweet was identical to the one sent to us on the 3^rd of June 2013 through his M-CAT @catstrangler101 account. So here was Burton using another account which he described as, “the Sous Chef of Allah’s Snackbar. Signature dishes include bacon and pork sausages. BBQ’d over a bed of burning Qu’rans for that special charcoal flavour. #TGDN #TCOT.”

In fact, from that same account, 7 minutes later he targeted us at TELL MAMA again with the following tweet:

“Breaking News @tellmamauk Mendacious Muslim Scumbag Fiyaz Mughal agrees not to tell any more porkies if UK Govt give him back his £214,000.” This tweet was not only identical in its nature to the one on the 3^rd of June 2013 sent from another account we believe was associated with him (@ardentadmirer1), it also listed monies identical in amount to the ones emanating from his infamous @catstrangler101 account. In fact a further set of tweets were sent and targeted at TELL MAMA which went on until the 22^nd of September 2013.

The Arrest of Timothy Martin Burton

Timothy Martin Burton was finally arrested by West-Midlands police after we within TELL MAMA made the case of a direct link to the @catstrangler101 account. Timothy Martin Burton was bailed on the proviso that no contact was made with myself. Part of this assumption was that he would not contact the @tellmamauk Twitter address, yet on the 18^th of January 2014 Timothy Martin Burton was active again on Twitter. The following tweet again demonstrated his views of Muslims or ‘Mohammedans’ as he called them. This came through his @catstrangler101 account:

“#MyJihad – Apologies for using ‘Mohammeddans’ in my previous post when what I meant was – terrorist, paedophiles and inbred welfare parasites.”

Timothy Martin Burton followed this tweet with one on the 1^st of March 2014, some 5 weeks before the trial at Birmingham Magistrate’s court. From the usual @catstrangler101 account it stated:

“Threatening arrests over a tweet – the mendacious grievance-mongering taqqiyya (sic) artists @tellmamauk are at it again.”So not only did he breach his bail conditions, Timothy Martin Burton continued to target and promote anti-Muslim hate publicly and openly on the Twitter platforms, including us at TELL MAMA knowing that I would probably come across the material as the Director of the project.

Links to Far Right Sites

Over the course of 2013, we had provided significant evidence to West-Midlands police as to internet links that Timothy Martin Burton had with Robert Spencer in the US. One of the doyennes of the virulently anti-Muslim so called counter-Jihad network, Robert Spencer has been banned from entering the UK by the Home Secretary.A further appeal also failed and the initial letter from the Home Office to the anti-Muslim blogger Robert Spencer read,

“After careful consideration, she [the Home Secretary] personally directed that you should be excluded from the United Kingdom on the grounds that your presence here is not conducive to the public good.”

“The Home Secretary has reached this decision because you have brought yourself within the scope of the list of unacceptable behaviours by making statements that may foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.”

Furthermore, Timothy Martin Burton was responsible for writing numerous blogs about TELL MAMA and I on the virulently anti-Muslim Liberty GB site which we have raised before. Further information on the anti-Muslim Far Right Liberty GB site can be gained through this link. Interestingly during one of his discussions on the Liberty GB site in January 2014 with a Sheryl McNaught whom TELL MAMA have highlighted before, Timothy Martin Burton stated,

“Hi Sheryl, it’s interesting that TellMamaUK are monitoring your posts on this site. I’m going to make sure Fiyaz Mughal gets his clock cleaned over his fraudulent and mendacious activities. By the time this trial is over his name is going to be mud throughout the world…………… Of course Liberty GB is in no way racist or Islamophobic, so if you wish to continue posting here then feel free, there’s nothing TellMamaUK can do about it.”

Australian Pals

One of Timothy Martin Burton’s Australian pals is a Mike Holt of Restore Australia. A read of this bizarre and vitriolic twisted site with its deeply anti-Muslim views is not only stomach churning, it demonstrates the on-line virulently anti-Muslim connections that Timothy Martin Burton had built up. So coming back full circle to the earlier statement that Timothy Martin Burton made of circulating this material far and wide, this is a brief example of what Burton wanted to circulate written by the bizarre Mike Holt:

“If Islam was not in the UK……… he (Fiyaz Mughal) would not be standing on his two hind legs to bleat about an insult that called him such terrible names as mendacious grievance mongering taqqiyya (sic) artist, and a lying Muslim scumbag.”

This small segment of this virulently twisted and hate filled blog showed who Timothy Martin Burton connected with and who he had reached out to for support. (Interestingly, so buoyed up is Timothy Martin Burton that he has set up his own Wikipedia Page that can be found here. Interestingly, the person who set it up – is a certain Timothy Martin Burton).

The Verdict

On Tuesday the 8^th of April 2014, after 2 hours of cross-examining by the solicitor of Timothy Martin Burton and after completely rebutting a confused and bizarre defence put up by the solicitor, I learnt that the defendant had been released. The judge stated that the CPS had not made its case on the racially aggravated harassment charges. Yet, what is worrying is that this case was less about race and more about my perceived religious background as the language and terminology shows.

One of these reasons the case failed, was because a Crown Prosecution Service who even with all of the information provided by us, could not make the case. Furthermore, this case was also based on the use of the term taqiyya which we have listed before and which the CPS did not back up with further specialist testimony or evidence. It also felt to me that the CPS was struggling to fully make the case on the terminology of anti-Muslim hate terms used – taqiyya in this case, (and given the background of Timothy Martin Burton and his links to Far Right groups), the context of the hate was clear.

On the issue of the term ‘taqiyya’, two years of work on anti-Muslim language and rhetoric shows that the frequency of the word is significant in anti-Muslim rhetoric targeted at Muslims as this article show. The CPS did miss out on the network and connections that Timothy Martin Burton had with Far Right sites and the lesson from this case is that much more work needs to be done on understanding the language of anti-Muslim hate. (Whilst, I can move on from this experience, what would the impact of such a verdict have on a Muslim visible female for example, and how would it make her feel about others or non-Muslims even).

Last but not least, what message does the verdict send out to British Muslims who may be targeted and called ‘taqiyya’ (lying because of their faith) Muslim scumbags? More than ever, what this case shows is that the CPS and its understanding of language around anti-Muslim hate lags well behind where things are today. Saying that, I will continue to work with the CPS since this is the way to ensure real change for victims who suffer targeted hate and intimidation. If we can make any changes to reduce and alleviate their suffering, then all of this would have been worth it and I am a firm believer that changes takes time and that consistency, tenacity and strong evidence builds that change. I also believe in State institutions and whilst I did not achieve the justice that I wanted, no doubt, change is coming and it is on the horizon.

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